Faith in Humanity
by Naruke
Summary: People who removed themselves from terrible situations became calloused, and the calloused turned into the indifferent. That kernel of humanity had to exist in you, or otherwise something shriveled and died. [AU, character death, Daikeru]


**Author's note:** I do not claim ownership of Digimon, nor do I claim any medical knowledge. All fallacies are unintentional. Jyou is about 29 or so, and Daisuke and Takeru are 19.

**-Faith in Humanity-**

Shortly before his mentor had retired, he had told Kido Jyou that it took a special something to be a doctor. One had to have a knack for healing or surgery, of course, but one also had to be able to utterly disengage from what happened to your patients. "Do everything in your power to save them, but if you can't…Try not to care," the old man's words had been.

Scrubbing his nose with the end of his pencil, Jyou frowned. It wasn't the greatest advice he'd been given, nor was it the truest. People who removed themselves from terrible situations became calloused, and the calloused turned into the indifferent. And indifference was worse than hate, he knew.

You had to have faith in the emotions that came when someone died. That kernel of humanity had to exist in you, or otherwise something shriveled and died.

Checking on his sleeping appendicitis patient, Jyou chewed that over. What exactly died? Maybe something civilized, the thing that allowed him to talk with people coherently and humanely. Or perhaps his perspective, that sense of what mattered in the grand scheme of things.

He left his sleeping patient and headed toward the lobby to get some coffee. Late-night shifts were the worst; death was a constant companion, either literally, in his patients, or figuratively, in his mind. He pushed open the doors, looking at his watch; 2 am. Three more hours until he could go home and try to sleep. Mentally sighing, he looked up in time to narrowly avoid being run over by a stumbling teenager.

Upon closer inspection, there were actually two of them; they were both insanely drunk. _Younger and younger_, he thought, mildly dismayed. "Is there something the matter?" he asked politely.

The shorter of the two looked blearily up at him, slightly cross-eyed. "Dai…suke's hit his head. Fell...down the-the stair."

Jyou resisted the urge to huff impatiently. He was lucky to be getting a story this coherent from a drunk teenager this late at night. "Okay. How long ago was this?"

The blonde screwed his face up in exaggerated concentration. "Hour…? We were in the stair-stairwell, and we were…" The boy flushed at this point, and Jyou felt slightly nauseous as he imagined what exactly the two had been up to. "…I knocked 'im down the stairs…and his head was like, bam, and he fell asleep for a while."

The injured boy, Daisuke, had woken up briefly and complained about the massive ache in his head. So the blonde had decided to drag his friend (and whatever else he might have been) to the hospital, but his brains were so addled by the alcohol that it had taken him the better part of an hour to find a hospital.

Of all the hospitals in the world, Jyou thought caustically. "And you said your name was…?"

"Takaishi…Takeru." The blonde half-whispered, swaying slightly. Jyou realized, extremely belatedly, that he should have had them both in a room, especially the auburn-haired one; the poor boy most likely had a concussion. 'We were', indeed.

Grasping Daisuke firmly above the elbow, Jyou led the two through the empty white halls and into an empty room. The blonde was marginally helpful in putting his incapacitated friend into the bed before collapsing, boneless, into a chair by the door. He ignored the boy as he went about his diagnostics.

Pulse was normal; breathing was calm with no hitching. Jyou reached out to touch Daisuke's head and was barely able to restrain his noise of surprise. There was a bump roughly the circumference of a shot glass on the boy's head, oozing blood slowly. He squashed a burgeoning sense of panic as he realized exactly how dire the situation was.

Sparing only a glance at the blonde, Jyou ran into the hallway and up the nearest flight of stairs. Koushiro was on the second floor; if only he were closer! He skidded to a halt outside of the break room and wordlessly grabbed Koushiro. _Disengage, disengage_, a voice whispered at the back of his mind.

He faintly registered his voice speaking, telling Koushiro about his late-night patients. As he described the lump on Daisuke's head, Koushiro pulled in a swift breath, and Jyou felt his heart clench uncomfortably tight. He neatly leaped the last three stairs and ran as fast as his long legs would take him, hoping against hope he wasn't too late.

Stopping breathlessly at the door that held the two boys, he took one look and struggled to hold down his bile. Takeru was on his knees by the bed, with Daisuke's hand in his. Takeru had looked up sharply at the sound of his and Koushiro's skidding sneakers. Koushiro's eyes darted from Takeru to Daisuke to Jyou and back to Daisuke. Jyou swallowed audibly and tried to meet Takeru's gaze. Red-rimmed and terrifyingly sober, the teen looked him squarely in the eye.

Jyou looked away, at Daisuke. The boy had been alive just moments ago, the pulse beating strongly against his fingertips. The face was pale under the tan, and he knew the skin would be cool and slightly waxy to touch. Takeru was still staring at him, waiting for something.

His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out. Of all the times to clam up! Koushiro noticed his distress and asked Takeru if he had called either his or Daisuke's parents. The blonde shook his head mutely, finally looking at his friend's face. Now the nurse stalled, unsure how to proceed. Jyou shook his head; he could take it from here. Koushiro stood back.

Takeru looked at him again, a faint accusation in his blue eyes this time. "He…he hit his head pretty hard, and…it bled inside."

The blonde blinked, and Jyou swallowed again. "There was nothing…you could do?" Jyou shook his head. Not with a concussion that bad, not with so much time between the fall and his arrival at the hospital. Takeru closed his eyes tightly before standing. The boy raised Daisuke's hand to his lips and then tenderly set the tanned hand next to the cooling body.

"I'll call…his parents," the teen said lowly, his voice cracking painfully on 'his'. Jyou stepped aside numbly as Koushiro led him to the nearest phone.

_I tried, didn't I?_ He asked his mentor. Or had he really done enough? This young man was dead; was it his fault for not noticing right away or Takeru's for being too drunk to find the damn hospital?

_Disengage_, he thought weakly before sitting jarringly in the chair beside Daisuke's body.

Through the window, he could barely see Takeru on the phone, tears falling softly down his face and off the tip of his nose. Jyou closed his eyes and let out a strangled moan as Takeru's emotionless gaze stared at him again.

When he found the courage to open his eyes again a few moments later, Takeru was kneeling at the bed again, Daisuke's cold, lifeless hand in his own, face buried in the sheets and shoulders shaking silently. Jyou reached out and tentatively grasped Daisuke's other hand, shuddering mentally at how truly lifeless the boy was.

Five minutes later, the people who could only be Daisuke and Takeru's families came bursting through door and Jyou let go of Daisuke's hand and stood. Takeru looked up at Jyou, his eyes a violent, painful red. The teen was already starting to pull back from his emotions and put on a calm face for his family. Sometimes people had to let go of what humanity they had so others could cry in their place.

He scratched his neck sadly and disengaged.


End file.
